We are living, beyond any doubt, in the age of the chip. Every electronic device we use runs on chips. So do electric cars. Servers, communications networks and artificial intelligence models cannot exist without them.

What few people realize is that every last-generation chip passes through a machine built by a single Dutch company: ASML.

It is a European business that has survived near-collapse and gone on to extraordinary success, and that today sits at the center of global technological progress.

Near-bankruptcy, then a worldwide boom

ASML was founded in 1984 as a joint venture between Philips and ASM International, with the goal of building machines capable of etching circuits onto semiconductors.

The project was ambitious and, at the same time, extremely risky. During the 1990s the company came close to failure more than once, weighed down by development costs that were too high and by ruthless Japanese competition.

In the meantime, however, the technology world was beginning to need chips that were ever smaller and ever more powerful. And nobody was able to make them. The only ones willing to gamble were ASML, who decided to put all their chips on EUV — extreme ultraviolet lithography.

It looked like madness. Building EUV required using a wavelength so short that it demanded a hard vacuum, a long series of multilayer mirrors and extraordinarily powerful light sources. Not for nothing was it a losing bet for two decades, with billions spent and no commercial result to show for it.

But this is precisely where the secret of ASML’s success was born: the decision to rely on other companies to get past the obstacles the EUV project kept throwing up.

In 2013 came the acquisition of Cymer, which solved the problem of light sources. In 2016 came a 24.9% stake in Carl Zeiss SMT, to secure the supply of optical components, together with the acquisition of HMI for multi-beam inspection. In 2020 it was the turn of Berliner Glas, which locked in the supply of optical and ceramic modules.

Delegating was the keystone that produced ASML’s planetary boom. Today the company works with more than 5,000 suppliers, and its Dutch engineers handle only the core operations: defining the system architecture and managing the direct relationships with companies such as Samsung, TSMC (the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer) and Intel.

The project took off for good in 2019, when TSMC produced its first 7nm chips using EUV. In 2026 — and probably for many years to come — giants like Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Intel itself depend on this technology.

ASML by the numbers

The growth figures are striking. In 2025 revenue came in at 32.7 billion euros (roughly $35.3 billion). In 2015 it had stopped at 6.3 billion euros (about $6.8 billion).

Almost a quarter of total revenue comes from maintaining and upgrading the installed base. Once a fab buys EUV machines, it is tied to the Dutch company indefinitely for servicing, upgrades and software.

It is a winning business model built on diversification, delegation and multi-year commercial relationships — one that, according to forecasts, should carry ASML’s total revenue to somewhere between 44 and 60 billion euros (about $47.5 billion to $65 billion) by 2030. Those are the numbers of a company that no longer has to compete for its place in the market, but instead sets the pace of progress for an entire industry.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Andrea Fabbri on July 21, 2026 as «Ogni chip avanzato del pianeta passa attraverso un’unica macchina. E la produce solo ASML». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.